John W. Sprague

John Wilson Sprague (4 April 1817-27 December 1894) was a Union Army Major-General during the American Civil War.

Biography
John Wilson Sprague was born in White Creek, New York in 1817, and he moved to Sandusky, Ohio in 1845 and worked in the shipping and commission sales businesses. From 1851 to 1852, he served as Treasurer of Erie County, and he joined the Union Army when the American Civil War broke out in 1861, and he was a prisoner-of-war from August 1861 to January 1862 after the Confederates captured him in West Virginia. He later led a regiment at the Siege of Corinth and a brigade at the Battle of Iuka, and he participated in the army's campaigns in northern Alabama and Mississippi, the Siege of Vicksburg, the Atlanta Campaign, and the Carolinas Campaign. He was praised for his performancee at the 1864 Battle of Decatur, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General on 30 July 1864 and took part in the March to the Sea and the march into North Carolina at the end of the war. From April 1865 to September 1866, he served as assistant commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau in Arkansas, and, after the war, he became a railroad executive and co-founded the city of Tacoma, Washington, serving as its first Mayor. He died there in 1894 at the age of 77.